


The Scariest Four-Letter Word in the Universe

by ainewrites (orphan_account)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hunters, One-Shot, the scariest four-letter word in the universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3923086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ainewrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malia gets shot with a barbed arrow, causing both her and Stiles to reflect on why they won't say a certain four-letter word</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scariest Four-Letter Word in the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've been seeing all this stuff about how Malia and Stiles haven't yet told each other that they love each other. Some say it's because they don't really love one another, but I think it's because they're both scared to. This one-shot is based off of that thought.

“Stiles!” Scott’s yell echoed through the trees, making Stiles grumble and clutch his bat tighter. “Of course, he runs off and now he needs me. Never mind that they all run like ten million miles an hour…”

ut when he turned around a bramble thicket and saw what was in front of him, the bat tumbled from limp fingers as he lunged forward.   
Malia was lying on the forest floor, an arrow shaft sticking from her stomach, her eyes glowing blue. Kira’s hands were covered with blood as she tried to staunch the bleeding, and Scott was fully wolfed-out, pinning a man with a crossbow to a tree.

Stiles fell to his knees beside Malia, who groaned. She was pale and cold to the touch. 

“We can’t leave the arrow in for much longer,” Kira warned. “Look.” She lifted her hands for a second to show the black lines that spider-webbed out from the wound. 

“Then pull it out!” Malia gasped the words, blood bubbling up from her lips. Kira shook her head. “It’s barbed, pulling it out could cause more damage.”

“Oh my g-“ Stiles ran his fingers through his hair. “Scott?”

Scott loped over, leaving the hunter limp on the ground below the tree . He was no longer in wolf form, and he held his phone in his hand. “I’ve texted Lydia, she’s bringing the jeep around.” He reached down and touched Malia’s arm, gasping as he took some of her pain into himself. Malia’s cheeks regained a little bit of color and she took a shuddering breath. 

It seemed to take hours but it must have only been a couple of minutes before the familiar dusty blue jeep appeared through the trees. Stiles gathered Malia in his arms as carefully as he could, but she still gasped, her eyes flickering from blue back to her normal dark brown. Her claws dug into his arms, and he winced, but didn’t voice his pain. 

They clambered into the jeep, Stiles carefully lying Malia across the back seat, her head in his lap. Kira took the shotgun seat and Scott squeezed into the trunk. “Should we take her to the hospital?” Lydia asked, turning to look at Stiles. Scott shook his head. “As soon as that arrow’s out she should be fine.”

“Deaton’s gone.” Scott piped up from the back. “He’ll be back tomorrow. But my Mom’s home, and she’s got this giant first aid kit.”

“Your house it is.” 

Stiles never knew Lydia could drive that fast.

Scott had called Melissa from the car, so she was waiting when the jeep pulled up. She took one look at Malia and the massive amounts of blood on both her and Stiles, and instructed Stiles to lie her on the kitchen table. 

“Malia, honey?” Melissa opened a red bag. Malia’s eyes fluttered up, but her gaze was unfocused. “I’m going to have to cut the arrow out. Try to stay still, okay?”

Malia just nodded, her hand snaking out to grasp Stiles’s. Scott took her other hand, the spidery black lines winding up his arm. One look at the scalpel and Stiles nearly fainted, collapsing into a kitchen chair. Malia somehow managed not to make a sound, even as Melissa withdrew the large, barbed arrowhead. The gaping wound was cleaned and stitched up, and Melissa went to wash her hands. Scott and Kira left Stiles along.

Stiles stared at the girl, now unconscious, on the table in front of him. He pushed her hair from her face and her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t wake. The blood coating her shirt and pants made him scared, even when Melissa came and assured him that as soon as the arrow came out she was starting to heal. She had handed him a glass of water and a rag to clean his hands, then left him.

He could hear Melissa, Kira and Scott talking out in the family room. Melissa was saying that Scott came home so often with huge injuries that she had had to learn how to remove and arrow. She made some joke about being practically a doctor now, but Stiles didn’t hear Scott’s reply.

Malia stirred, drawing Stiles’s attention back to her. He felt a surge of affection as he looked at her, and something stirred in his mind.  
He really loved this girl. Not in the way he had loved Lydia…Lydia had been cute kind of love, a love that had felt fluttery and protective. His love was Malia was wild, fierce, and passionate, much like the girl herself.

But why couldn’t he tell her?

He knew why, really. Because he was scared. Malia had been living in the woods for eight years as a coyote, she still had only the barest grasps on being human. She was so used to being independent, not relying on anyone or anyone relying on her, he worried that with one mention of the word “love” she would be gone. 

He leaned down to kiss her forehead and she groaned, her eyes flitting open.  
________  
The entire room smelled like blood. That was the first thing she noticed when she woke up. The second thing she noticed was the feeling of fingers entwined with hers, and the sharp smell of fear that almost overpowered the blood.

“Stiles?” Malia’s voice cracked, and she swallowed hard before trying again. “Stiles?”

The relief that washed over Stiles’s face was almost painful in its intensity. “Oh, thank god. How are you feeling?”

“Awful.” There was the familiar burning of silver poisoning, and it seemed to be slowly working its way through her intestines. But the burning was slowly fading, replaced by an equally familiar itching that told her she was starting to heal. 

She shifted slightly, staring around what she now recognized as the McCall’s kitchen. “What happened?”

“A hunter shot you with a barbed arrow.” Stiles gestured vaguely at the counter. “And Melissa preformed minor surgery to remove it.” Malia glanced from the blood-slimed, viciously barbed arrow sitting on a pile of paper towels and then back to Stiles. He still wore that adorable look of concern on his face. 

“Kiss me.” Malia had never been one for subtly. She grabbed the neck of Stiles’s tee-shirt and yanked him down to her. Kissing him had the oddest effect on her…it made her feel both more grounded and light as air. Her stomach turned little flip flops and her heart sped up. 

Someone cleared their throat and knocked on the door frame, breaking up the make-out session. Both Stiles and Malia turned to see Lydia leaning against the doorframe, smirking. Even with her floral-patterned dress stained with blood, she looked carefree. “Your jeep looks like a murder scene,” she said cheerfully, “but it no longer FEELS like a murder scene.”

Scott and Kira appeared around the corner. Kira had her sheathed katana in her hand, and her duffle bag slung over her shoulder. “Dad’s waiting out front in the car.” She said apologetically, just as she noticed Malia awake and half-sitting up. “Oh! You’re awake! And not dying. Um, how are you feeling?”

"Like an arrow was just pulled from my body.”

“That’s good.” Kira seemed flustered, and she stood on her tiptoes to kiss Scott’s cheek. “Love you.” Then she was gone, and Malia heard the door shut. Lydia and Melissa went to wash their hands, and Scott convinced Stiles to leave Malia for a second to do the same.

They left Malia lying on the kitchen table, staring at the ceiling. She kept reflecting on what she just heard, the casual way Kira had said “Love you.” There was no hesitation, no guilt, just two quick words accompanied by a kiss on the cheek.

They were words that Malia had thought about saying hundreds of times. Because she did love Stiles, she really did. She knew it instinctively, from the way her insides twisted and her heart fluttered and she felt like grinning madly whenever he smiled or touched her. It wasn’t the fluffy crush she had had on Danny Māhealani when she was seven (that had ended when she realized that he didn’t even know her name), nor the slightly more intense crush she had had on Jackson Whitmore than she was eight (that ended when he called her an idiotic nerd when she asked him to have lunch with her. She had kicked him in his shin as hard as she could and promptly lost her crush).

She loved Stiles with an animalistic passion, with both her human side and her coyote side. But still…she couldn’t tell him. Every single time she stopped, because she was afraid.

She was afraid because she didn’t want to see the look on his face that would tell her he didn’t feel the same way. He had loved Lydia for so long, what if he still loved her? What if the relationship he had with Malia was just a passing attraction, and any hint of something long-term would send him away. She didn’t know what she would do without Stiles. Scott, Kira, Lydia and Liam may be her pack, but Stiles was her family, more than Peter could ever hope to be.

Slowly, she swung her legs across the table, wincing as the movement sent a sharp stabbing pain into her stomach. Her shirt, originally cream-colored, with soaked with brown-red blood almost up to her breasts. She lifted it, the fabric sticking to her skin. There was a ragged wound just to the left of her belly button, stitched up neatly. She touched it and hissed as pain flared up, but she could almost see it healing.

She slipped off the table, bracing herself against the counter as she half walked, half-shuffled toward the living room. She was halfway down the hallway to the bathroom when Stiles found her. Despite her protests (she wanted to wash the blood off), he led her to the living room and helped her sit on the couch.

“You could re-injure yourself!” There was the adorably concerned look on his face, the one that made Malia want to kiss him. “The stitches could tear or you could start bleeding…”

Someone entered the room, and they both turned to see Melissa, who said she needed to check the wound to make sure it was healing. Malia untangled herself from Stiles, shrugged, and tugged off her blood-stained shirt. Scott, who had come around the corner, turned bright red and left again. Melissa gave Malia a loose t-shirt to wear, and told her to go and get some sleep.  
________  
Later that night, Malia lay in Stiles’s bed, her head on his shoulder and his fingers in her hair, idly twisting it and playing with it. Her stomach was almost healed, and she was exhausted, but she couldn’t help but twist to kiss Stiles. She gathered her courage, and whispered, “I love you.” She felt him smile against her lips.

And, when she had settled into the blankets and was almost, almost asleep, she felt his lips at her ear. “I love you, too.”

Then she slipped peacefully into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've got this theory that Scott has started just showing up with wounded werewolves who need arrows removed or wounds stitched, so now Melissa has this huge first-aid kit and knows how to do a whole bunch of stuff a nurse wouldn't normally know how to do.


End file.
